Counting prime orbits in shrinking intervals for expanding Thurston maps

Abstract

We establish a local central limit theorem for primitive periodic orbits of expanding Thurston maps, providing a fine-scale refinement of the Prime Orbit Theorem in the context of non-uniformly expanding dynamics. Specifically, we count the number of primitive periodic orbits whose Birkhoff sums for a given potential lie within a family of shrinking intervals. For eventually positive, real-valued \holder continuous potentials that satisfy the strong non-integrability condition, we derive precise asymptotic estimates. In particular, our results apply to postcritically-finite rational maps whose Julia set is the whole Riemann sphere.